Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Still no Mittmentum

As ABC News' Gary Langer has noted: "In all seven states holding primaries Tuesday night combined, 61 percent of voters picked either electability or experience as the top attribute they were looking for in a candidate - and 51 percent of them supported Romney. His challenge is that a sizable remaining chunk of the GOP electorate, 36 percent across these seven states, picked a different attribute as more important - either the candidate with 'strong moral character' or the 'true conservative.' And among these true believers, Romney's support plummeted to just 17 percent. Forty-six percent instead voted for Santorum, 20 percent Paul, 16 percent Gingrich."

Texas might have gone a long way toward settling this thing -- or not -- had our elections taken place with the others yesterday. Food for thought.

But while Romney desperately wants to close the book on the 2012 GOP primary, his opponents are ready to simply start another chapter.

Santorum may have come up short in Ohio, but he's likely to rack up wins next week in Kansas, Alabama, and Mississippi.

All three states have an electoral make-up that looks much more like Tennessee and Oklahoma - two states Santorum easily carried Tuesday night - than they do Ohio or Massachusetts.

For example, in 2008, evangelical voters made up 77 percent of the vote in Alabama and 69 percent of the vote in Mississippi.

R-money cannot get credit for anything; he spends $8 million in Ohio versus Frothy's $1.8, ekes out a win, and still loses the media spin game. He has a huge delegate lead -- Santorum in fact did not complete the necessary paperwork to be awarded the GOP electors from Ohio at the national convention that he earned -- so the popular vote "win" serves only as narrative that Mitt is weak. That's a lose-lose for Republicans.